The heat🔥 was turned up this weekend as the ‘Mail On Sunday’ Published an excellent article putting pressure on Persimmon to “Cancel ALL leasehold deals” following an out of court settlement offered to a Cardiff estate.

“Persimmon under pressure to cancel all leasehold deals as climbdown by builder gives homeowners hope”

The National Leasehold Campaign passed this story to the ‘Mail On Sunday’ as we believe the Cardiff Council V’s Persimmon Homes Ltd is of National Interest.

The NLC have been aware of this case for some time as we are sure many developers were also watching this case with interest. I’m sure ALL developers gave a sigh of relief that the case was dropped before court.

It really is a shame Cardiff Council didn’t have the funds to pursue this case.

The letter Cardiff residents received from Persimmon stated

“We have also been in discussion with Cardiff County Council who have been passing on those concerns to us, on behalf of a number of residents.

Ensuring that customer satisfaction, as part of our Persimmon Pledge, sits at the heart of our business and so when things do not go as planned, we want to do our best to put things right”

Katie Kendrick (Founder of the NLC) gave the following statement

“The NLC are pleased that Persimmon have eventually done the right thing for these residents. However this is not an isolated case. Many other residents have experienced exactly the same throughout the country. We urge Persimmon to honour this for all other developments across the country who are currently trapped in the leasehold scandal.

This case is of significant national interest as thousands feel they have been miss sold their leasehold properties.
It is disappointing that this case is not being taken to court for a full hearing. It remains questionable if persimmon have offered the residents their freehold free of charge as ‘damage limitation’ as succeeding and winning this case against persimmon would have set a legal precedence for many other estates to follow. This case proves they can put things right if they want to, but developers choose not to.

The NLC urge all other developers to also ‘put things right’ and return our freeholds to us free of charge.

We hope the CMA consider this case in their investigation into potential miss selling and unfair contract terms”

This is a ‘DAVID V’S GOLIATH’ battle.

This news has certainly awaken leaseholders on a national level. Leaseholder are rightly riled up and angry. Many asking “what does this mean for us?”

There is a glimmer of hope as this illustrates developers can do the right thing when pushed to do so by the right authorities.

Leaseholders do not have the endless millions of pounds that developers & freeholders have to fight this. We don’t have the clever lawyers, accountants and expensive PR companies advising us; But what we do have is the truth. We have each other and through the movement of the NLC and support of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership (LKP) we are proud to see leaseholders fighting back.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

It’s time to take action. Leaseholder’s must work together.

• Work together with your neighbours. Please ensure your neighbours are aware. Encourage them to join with you and carry out the steps below. The more people that keep the pressure on the better.

• Contact your MP. You can do this via ‘Write to them’ by clicking here – Check that your MP is one of the 167 MP’s that are part of the APPG on Leasehold Reform & Commonhold. If they are not a member of the APPG request that they join. Send them the link of recent Persimmon Article. Tell them you want them to work with you to ensure you too get the same outcome.

• Contact your local press. Especially if you are living in a Persimmon property. Now is a perfect time to “Strike while the irons hot”. We are happy to be CC’d into any press correspondence if they want a comment from us.(nationalleaseholdcampaign@gmail.com)
• Contact your local Council. Share the ‘Cardiff Council’s’ actions with them and ask them to do the same on your behalf.
• Write to your developers CEO. Request they assign the freehold title to their rightful owner.

• Contact both National Trading Standards & your Local Trading Standards Anyone who was not advised of all matters that would have materially affected their decision to view or purchase the property are encouraged to register a complaint.

Please ensure your complaints are logged via the Consumer Service Helpline.

The reason being that logging them this way means that they go onto the National Trading Standards database which is searchable by all Local Trading Standards.

If consumers simply complain to their local trading standards it doesn’t always get on the database but by doing it through the Consumer Service Helpline it goes on the national database and is then sent to the appropriate Local Trading Standards (LTS)

The benefit of it going on the National database is that LTS can then see if there are pockets of complaints in their region and are therefore more likely to prioritise an investigation. Currently if they can only see one complaint they will prioritise other complaints.

Please contact them via email and keep a copy of their responses by clicking the following link:

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/get-more-help/report-to-trading-standards/
Point to note is National Trading Standards cannot deal with a complaint that is over 3 years old, however we do think even these are worth lodging so that they get a view of the number of issues being caused and get a feeling of the magnitude of the problem.

Don’t forget to reference the Persimmon Article in your correspondence with Trading Standards.

Encourage your neighbours to join the NLC. Together we are stronger.

#PEOPLEPOWER